Is traditional game outsourcing on its death bed?

Streamline Studios has worked on big games such as Street Fighter V, BioShock Infinite, Killer Instinct, Final Fantasy XV, and Pillars of Eternity.

But chances are you’ve never heard of Streamline, which is based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, because it is an outsourcing company, developing technology or parts of games for other developers and publishers. I met with Stefan Baier, the chief product officer at Streamline, at the MIGS 2016 event in Montreal. He gave a talk on “Why outsourcing doesn’t work.” That seemed contradictory for a guy who works at an outsourcing company, but Baier believes there’s a shift happening in the industry that means traditional game outsourcing is on its way out.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.